Burned By The Facebook IPO? It could be worse!

Since Facebook went public just over a week ago, there have been allegations that prior to the IPO Morgan Stanley selectively disclosed reduced analyst estimates for the company’s earnings to certain investors. Speaking of disclosure, the IPO also faced glitches on the first day of trading, as brokers and investors never knew for hours whether their trades went through!

The irony here is we’re talking about Facebook, the company that discloses to your friends, co-workers, 90-year old great-grandmother who learned how to use the computer at the retirement home, and random acquaintances that your wife is leaving you in instantaneous real time!

Sure, you’ve been married 4 years, so why shouldn’t you expect a multi-billion dollar company to let everyone know about your future divorce battle by injecting a little broken heart symbol and terse message that you are no longer married into the news feeds of everyone you know. To make matters worse, when you go to the local Rick’s Cabaret to drown your sorrows, and a consoling friend checks you in there on Facebook, one of those aforementioned random acquaintances will rob your home, taking whatever your ex-wife didn’t get in the divorce settlement (basically the jar of Buffalo tribute coins you saw advertised on TV that only have 14 milligrams of gold in them).

But enough about your divorce, because just as your ex-wife used to say, this isn’t all about you! According to Bloomberg, main street investors may have lost $600 million on the IPO! Could it be worse? Of course, that’s why you’re reading NotTheWorstNews.com, the site that makes you feel better knowing there’s worse conceivable news out there.

3 Worse Things Than Being A Main Street Investor of Facebook’s IPO

1. You could be Joe Green, a former roommate of Mark Zuckerberg who worked on “Facemash” with him, according to this article at Mashable. Green was offered a chance to drop out of Harvard and help start up Facebook, but his father, a professor, talked him out of it. Obviously, his father was a teacher at the school of Not-Learning-From-Harvard-Drop-Out-Bill-Gates and professor of “How To Miss Out On The World’s Most Lucrative Once In A Lifetime Opportunities 101,” as Green may have been worth in the hundreds of millions had he not listened to his father. Still, if said Joe Green happens to be reading this, it could be worse. You could have been football great Mean Joe Green, and your father could have talked you out of starring in one of the most popular commercials in Superbowl history. Not only would you have lost all the notoriety and endorsement money, but you also would have missed out on trading a kid an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola for a sweaty towel – the best trade in sports history!

2. Mashable also tells us of Aaron Greenspan, another classmate of Zuckerberg, who allegedly had a similar idea to Facebook. Not only did Greenspan not get a piece of Facebook, he didn’t get mentioned in the movie the Social Network, so he sued Columbia Pictures for leaving him out of the story, and a judge dismissed his case. That’s two alleged snubs from two giant corporations! Still, if said Aaron Greenspan happens to be reading this, it could have been worse: they could have put you in the movie after carefully considering the suggestions of focus groups! You know how focus groups are: they want less scenes of people talking and more scenes of adult men being kicked in the groin by precocious kids. So, Mr. Greenspan, you should be thankful that focus group never got its way, as every typical American movie-goer would be high-fiving and fist-bumping you in the groin whenever you walk down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

3. You could have been a main street investor trying to buy Facebook, but mistakenly invested your life savings in Physicians Formula Holdings Inc., which has the understandably potentially confusing NASDAQ ticker symbol “FACE“. If you bought FACE at the open on May 18, and sold it on Friday, May 25, you would only have 81.6% of your money left. That compares to 84.0% if you bought Facebook at the $38 IPO price and held it for the same period of time. That said, as it may be hard to admit you made such an error to your Facebook friends, maybe the company would help you save *cough* face by giving you a discount on their cosmetic products now that you’re their number one shareholder.